Herbert McCabe

HERBERT McCABE, who has died aged 72, was a distinguished Roman Catholic theologian who reinterpreted the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas, but attracted most attention for his espousal of radical politics and for his criticism of the Church.

12:00AM BST 20 Aug 2001

HERBERT McCABE, who has died aged 72, was a distinguished Roman Catholic theologian who reinterpreted the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas, but attracted most attention for his espousal of radical politics and for his criticism of the Church.

A Dominican priest, McCabe became associated with the social radicalism that became fashionable in Roman Catholic circles during the 1960s following the Second Vatican Council. In 1967, he shocked the Catholic community with a leader in New Blackfriars, the Cambridge-based journal published by the English Dominicans which he edited.

In response to the defection from the Roman Catholic Church of his friend, the theologian Charles Davis, McCabe wrote that Davis's charges that the Church was "very plainly corrupt" seemed to be very well-founded, and that this was something taken for granted by English Catholics.

McCabe went on to write: "The Church is quite plainly corrupt: a cardinal selects Christmas as the occasion for supporting the murder of Vietnamese civilians; the Pope alleges that the church's teaching is not in doubt about birth control; the Congregation of Rights has just asserted that a family communion celebrated in a private home and followed by a meal is a practice 'alien to the Catholic religion', while nearer home and more comically, a Bishop has expressed the fear that Catholics who sing carols in Anglican churches are endangering their faith and morals."

McCabe was suspended from his priestly duties - though the suspension was quickly lifted after intercession in Rome by Archbishop Cardinale, then the Apostolic Delegate - and lost his position as editor of New Blackfriars. He returned unrepentant to the helm of the journal in 1970, beginning his first leading article with "As I was saying when I was so oddly interrupted . . ."

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Gregarious and with a fondness for drinking, McCabe was known to sing IRA songs at the Greyhound pub in Oxford, and to teach guests at Blackfriars the Italian Communist song Avanti Popolo, with a chorus of "Mussolini e un bastardo!". A friend recalled him proudly offering, in the course of an evening at the Polish Hearth Club in London, to assassinate Pope John Paul II, stating this as the duty of a good Catholic.

Even when sober, McCabe wholeheartedly embraced "liberation" theology. In one piece, he wrote that "in the end, the workers will need not only solidarity and class consciousness, but guns as well", adding wistfully that "in this country and in the Western world as a whole, this moment has not yet arrived."

The son of a doctor, John Ignatius McCabe was born at Middlesbrough on August 2 1928 into a devoutly Roman Catholic family of Irish descent. After St Mary's College, McCabe went to Manchester to read Chemistry, but later switched to Philosophy. McCabe joined the Dominican order in 1949, taking the name Herbert, and was ordained in 1955. He then spent three years in an inner city parish in Newcastle upon Tyne before being sent to Manchester, where he set up a house and lectured to student chaplaincies around the country.

From the beginning of the 1960s, McCabe became involved with the socialist "December Group", with his friend the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, and in 1964 moved to Cambridge to edit New Blackfriars. Following his dismissal, the Newman Association organised a meeting at Central hall Westminster, and a "pray-in" at Westminster Cathedral; a petition was circulated and signed by 2,200 people.

But McCabe had to wait three years before resuming his post, and went to Ireland. There he rediscovered his Irish roots and espoused the cause of Irish nationalism. In 1974 he became an Irish citizen. As a teacher in Oxford, McCabe infuriated colleagues with his views while imparting to students a love of the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas, whose works he translated and interpreted.

His publications included The New Creation (1964), on the sacraments, and Law, Love and Language (1968), on ethics. The Teaching of the Catholic Church (1985), commissioned by the Archbishop Couve de Murville of Birmingham, offered a fresh view of the Gospels. God Matters (1987) was a collection of his sermons.